Based on the information in the John Oliver segment (which matches with what I vaguely knew about the situation beforehand), most actual coal mining going on today doesn't even fit with being "one of many good employers" for an Appalachian community.

The old model was basically: you have a coal mine. You send people with hand or hand-held power tools down into that mine to dig out the coal. If that particular mine runs out (which it will after many decades of use), the odds are very good you can open a new one within a short enough distance that the people from the same town can still work it. This model took hundreds to thousands of men to extract a modest stream of coal from the mine for a long period of time.

The new model, as I understand it, is: you have a mountain with coal in it. You use explosives and enormous machines to cut the top off the mountain layer by layer and sift the coal out of the debris. This model takes a few men (maybe a few dozen) to extract a huge amount of coal out of the mountain in a short time, then they move on to another mountain.

Not only does the new model employ an order of magnitude fewer people, it doesn't provide a job that stays in one place for decades. That makes it a poor fit for a "good employer" for a community.

(That is, of course, leaving aside entirely what the new model does to the environment, which is godawful, but not relevant to its place as a community employer.

Dan Aris

A significant proportion of people with diseases and allergies that were previously (mostly) unknown would just have died from 15,000 years ago to, oh, say, 200 years ago, and their death been attributed to the will of God(s).

Celiac and other food sensitivities have become either more prevalent, or more diagnosed, in recent years (or possibly both). If it is, in fact, a change in prevalence, I think we've got a variety of highly plausible causes based on changes in culture, environment, and diet over the past century or two.

Dan Aris

Actually, it sounds like he's gone further, and is now saying that people who don't like what Trump thinks don't actually exist—polls showing disapproval of his actions are "fake news".

Dan Aris

I'm not going to make a "no true Scotsman" argument, because it's irrelevant whether what they were trying to achieve was "true" socialism.

Socialism, communism, capitalism—none of those have anything particular to do with mass state-sponsored murder. If you think socialism—things like Medicare, Social Security, and the Earned Income Tax Credit—can in any meaningful causative way lead to millions dead, then you're the one who's deluded.

Dan Aris

Can their "perfect" cup of coffee do this?

I thought not.

Dan Aris

I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like I've seen this construction a lot more in recent weeks, and it really bugs me.

"X Times Less" is mathematical nonsense. "1/X As Much" is usually what is meant by it, and is both mathematically and linguistically correct.

So while I presume this headline means that Macs cost a third as much as Windows machines, that's not what it actually says.

Dan Aris

Most correctly, it's "In China, there are fears that..."

Dan Aris

a) I'm all for that.

b) America != World

Dan Aris

Yes...but the point is that it's not just 1000 cars instead of 100 buses. It's 1000 cars instead of 100 buses and some indeterminate number of private cars.

Dan Aris

That's not what he said, though. The clear implication was not "the personal vehicles everyone owns should be replaced with self-driving ones", but "people should use a system of public self-driving vehicles to get around."

I certainly don't need a car for 90% of most days. It would be much more efficient for me to be able to use one for the trip to and from work, and let it go drive other people around, to work, errands, or whatever else, the rest of the time.

Dan Aris

I'm pretty sure you're woefully uninformed on this.

To the best of my knowledge, Apple doesn't muck about with subsidiaries for all the different stuff they do. Selling computers, making operating systems, selling music downloads, selling apps, and selling music streaming subscriptions all fall within Apple Inc., whose stock ticker symbol is indeed AAPL.

Dan Aris

Because historically, going to work on the factory has allowed workers to send a huge chunk of their paycheck home (like, 80% or more, sometimes) while living in the company dormitories, work there for a few years, and then effectively retire on the savings.

Here in the West, we see factory work as demanding, unrewarding drudgery. For people in developing countries, it's a way out of abject poverty, and provides a chance for something better for their children, even if they personally don't get a significantly better deal than their parents did. Don't make the mistake of looking at their lives, their culture, and their available choices through the lens of our own situation.

Dan Aris

Is it just me, or is the main link (the one actually referencing Game Developer Barbie) just an anchor tag without an href...?

Dan Aris

Rene Ritchie specifically said that there was not going to be a display with an integrated GPU introduced at WWDC or in the near future.

That doesn't mean that there isn't going to be any Thunderbolt Display refresh.

Dan Aris

As I understand it, from hearing about this type of thing from other sources, creating chimeras isn't just meant to provide a source of transplantable human organs. It enables researchers to study the effects of drugs (and whatever else) on human organs much better than using straight-animal analogs, without the kinds of ethical issues that make it tricky to impossible to do it in human clinical trials.

Dan Aris